Scriptural Christianity

What Does It Actually Mean to Be a Christian?
There’s a question worth taking time to consider: What does it truly mean to be a Christian? Not merely to call yourself one, attend church, live in a Christian country, or belong to a community with a Christian heritage, but to genuinely follow as Jesus’ earliest followers did. This question cuts through centuries of assumptions and gets to something raw and honest about the state of faith in the modern world.

A Faith Made Visible
Where does Wesley turn to answer that question? Acts. The book of Acts gives us a striking picture of the earliest Christian community. In Acts 4:23-31, after Peter and John are released from custody, the believers gather together and pray. The place where they are meeting is shaken. They are filled with the Holy Spirit. And they speak God's word with boldness.

That use of the word shaken is worth pausing over. It was more than a physical tremor in the earth below; something deeper was happening within the people gathered there. Not long before, they had been hiding, afraid for their lives and uncertain of everything. Now they were being awakened, shaken loose from fear, from smallness, and from the temptation to stay quiet and safe. They were being reminded of who they were, whose they were, and what they were called to do.

Wesley asks whether we have been similarly shaken. Has our faith genuinely disrupted the way we live? Has it challenged our priorities, confronted our comfort, and changed the way we treat the people around us? All because faith that never inconveniences us is no faith at all.

The Ordinary Gifts 
When we think about the Holy Spirit, we often look for the dramatic. We want the building to shake. We want signs and wonders, speaking in tongues, and extraordinary proof that God is present and at work. But the earliest Christians pointed to “evidence” mostly found in ordinary, everyday things: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the fruits of the Spirit Paul describes in Galatians 5:22-23, and they are available to everyone who opens themselves to the Spirit’s work, not just prophets or apostles. Everyone.

The question is not whether we can produce a list of extraordinary spiritual experiences. The question is whether we are becoming more loving, more faithful, more courageous, more generous, more truthful, more holy. Are the ordinary fruits of the Spirit visible in the texture of our daily lives? That is the evidence that matters. That is what genuine Christian faith looks like from the outside. If we spend all of our time waiting for the dramatic evidence of God in our lives, then we will miss God in the ordinary moments right in front of us.

Christianity Spreads Because It Cannot Sit Still
One of the most striking things about the early church in Acts is how much it moved. These weren’t people who met once a week, agreed on what they believed, and then went home unchanged. They were so filled with God’s love that they couldn’t keep it to themselves. It overflowed into the lives of their neighbors, reached those who were suffering, and drew them toward anyone who hadn’t yet experienced what they had found.

This is the nature of genuine faith. This is what faith looks like. When a person truly grasps the love of God, they experience real freedom from shame, from guilt, from the weight of everything they have carried, and they cannot stay quiet about it. The light does not hide itself. The love does not stay contained. What is the point of receiving that gift of freedom if we are not willing to share it with others?

And it is worth noting, and warning, that this kind of witness has always made the powerful uncomfortable. In Acts, the religious and political authorities grew angry at the early Christians not because they were causing violence, but because their witness threatened their control on society. When faith erodes unjust power, those who benefit from that power tend to push back, hard. This is not a new pattern, nor is it a forgotten one either. It runs from the first century straight through to our own time.

There Is No Christian Nation
I know I have been saying this is the challenging part, but, for real, it is. It is tempting to look at a country with churches on every corner, crosses on public buildings, and Christian language woven through its political speech, and call it a Christian nation. But a society is not made Christian by its labels or its heritage or its public celebrations. A Christian society would be known by its fruit.

Are the homeless being sheltered? Are the sick being cared for? Are the vulnerable being protected? Is justice being pursued? Is mercy being practiced? Is truth being told? Is wealth being hoarded? Are the foreigner and immigrant welcomed? I could go on quoting the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, Gospels and Epistles for pages and pages. These are the measures that matter. Not what a nation calls itself, but what it actually does with and for the people within it.

This is not a comfortable standard to apply. It was not comfortable when Wesley first said it to the members of the Church of England, and it is not comfortable now. But the discomfort is the point. We are not called to admire a version of Christianity that validates our beliefs or maybe challenges us from a safe distance with minimal impact. We are called to live it fully.

It Begins In You
The renewal of scriptural Christianity does not begin with a nation, a government, or an institution. It begins in one heart. One household. One congregation. One community. Each faithful choice, each act of mercy, each moment of genuine courage or honesty or love, becomes part of something larger. A chain reaction of grace that moves outward in ways we cannot fully predict or control.

The Spirit of God is still at work. The promises are not yet fully realized, but they are not abandoned either. Peace is still coming. Mercy is still coming. The final word belongs not to fear or violence or selfish ambition, but to love.

So, the invitation is this: let what has settled in us be shaken. Let grace do its work. Let the life of Christ become visible not just in what we say we believe, but in everything we do, in our homes, our workplaces, our communities, and our common life together.

That is what scriptural Christianity has always looked like. And by God's grace, it is still possible today.